[SmithL]

First, it was Bush's fault, then it was Wal-Mart's fault. Now it's cultures fault?

Maybe they should sue the guy who invented the Internet.

[mewzilla]

Well, they probably don't want to blame B&N. Its CEO, Leonard Riggio, is a big Dem donor.

[CobaltBlue]

"It was Bush's fault"? Help me out here. You post a thoughtful analysis on the demise of independent bookstores, and then you follow up with something banal like "it was Bush's fault"?

Why even bother?

Is there something inherently amusing about bookstores? Other than eating the books, I mean?

[SuziQ]

Well, if the store would sell books that a larger number of people actually BUY, it wouldn't have to close!

[RonHolzwarth]

When the printing press was invented and came into common use, a lot of scriveners in England were thrown out of work. But that took a few decades, if not centuries.

In today's world, changes take place almost overnight.

[em2vn]

"I was in the Safeway in Sonoma, and they had Noam Chomsky for sale."
Quickly find another market if your's is selling anything by Chomsky.

[P-40]

The thing had sat too long on the shelf.

Put some pictures of J-Lo's butt on it...then it will sell.

[theFIRMbss]

>The computer system at Cody's Books ... told him to ship back Emmanuel Kant's "Critique of Pure Reason." ... "When one of the greatest works of Western philosophy, if not the greatest, wasn't selling at Cody's, there's something wrong," said Ross

Hmmm. We can only
wonder how other great books
perform at the store . . .

Perhaps the First Church
of Pamelatology
should buy the book store . . .

[Alama]

One thing the author or the bookstore owner don't fault is how the culture war which replaced the study of Kant, Plato and other "dead white man" in colleges by the trash of such as Rigoberta Menchu may be at fault...

[jmcenanly]

"It may be in the not-too-distant future that there is no such thing as an out-of-print book. If nothing is out of print and nothing is hard to find, all books will be $6."

Currently, on Amazon, you can have a used copy for $3.85 http://www.amazon.com/gp/offer-listing/0521657296/sr=8-2/qid=1150987627/ref=pd_bbs_2/102-3257081-6960148?%5Fencoding=UTF8

His point is well taken, but this is not necessarily a bad thing. If knowledge is readily accessible, more people will be able to learn. Look at the explosion of knowledge after Gutenberg's invention of the printing press. In his time, he also had his critics.

[Antoninus]

Maybe they should try following the trends rather than their political biases. Last week, I tried to buy a copy of Ann Coulter's "Godless." The first indie bookstore I went into didn't have it--although they had plenty of old books by Al Franken, Michael Moore, and that ilk. I then strolled over to another independent and found a copy. Of course, it was spine-out, buried on the shelf. At the register, the young lady cattily quipped to her colleague (not to me, mind you), "Is this the only copy we have?"

Her colleague replied with an equally superior tone, "Yeah, I guess he [meaning the owner] didn't even expect to sell that one."

When an independent bookstore owner isn't smart enough to put a top 5 bestseller on the NYTimes list and the Amazon.com rankings in a pile on his front table, he deserves to go out of business.

[jiggyboy]

Reap What You Sow Department:

a deteriorating Telegraph Avenue

...undoubtedly the result of intellectually honest businessmen packing up and leaving a socialist hellhole...

college students, his bread-and-butter market, are reading fewer scholarly books

...because they are majoring in "[Protected Group name here] Studies" which have so much more "emotional truth" than oppressive, Euro-centric, patriarchical fields of study like "Mathematics", "American Literature", and "Western Philisophy"...

an increase in city parking ticket fees that scared off customers around the Civic Center

...because government is looked to as the source of all things, thus it increases its funding requirements as well...

and a nettlesome homeless problem there

...because they have the "right" to live wherever they want in a place where they know suckers with no concept of individual responsibility will throw them the cash they "deserve"...

etc...

[weegee]

"I was in the Safeway in Sonoma, and they had Noam Chomsky for sale."

Filed in the sleeping aids part of the pharmacy?

[Mind-numbed Robot]

Maybe they should sue the guy who invented the Internet.

He was killed by global warming. Had a heat stroke.

[redgolum]

I love used book stores, and spend to much time in them. The "indie" shops around here are either hard leftist or hard socialist.

[dennisw]

Lots of foreigners (immigrants) have zero interest in our cultural legacy. The student population at Berkeley is mostly Asian. Draw your own conclusions

I lived in Berserkly many moons ago and know the terrain. Cody's had beautiful wood floors.

[L98Fiero]

What elitist whiners. Griping because their Commie books are for sale at Safeway. I guess Safeway shoppers aren't "cultured" enough to read their books with no pictures and big words.

Selling Commie books to jobless hippes in tax-city. Brilliant!!

[Revolting cat!]

It's the culture, stupid. Bookstores like Cody's will stock Al Franken, Dan Brown and Hairy Potty because they sell in places like Berkeley, but they'll also stock books that B&N and Borders couldn't be bothered with. I remember reading glowing reviews of this book in the local newspaper's Sunday book section

then rushing to an independent bookstore to find they had three or four copies of it in hardback selling at full list price. I went home and order it online for less than half that. I kept checking the bookstore over the next few weeks. While it was always crowded and selling the kind of crap I mentioned above, it never seemed to have sold a copy of this fine novel. It's the culture, stupid!

[CIB-173RDABN]

That may bode well for Internet-savvy readers, he said, but could spell doom for the local bookstore.

---

Change your business model. I prefer reading a book I can hold. Why not offer a service that will print and bind a book on demand?

I think technology is advanced enough now that it is possible to print a complete book in a relatively short time and have it bound. The quaility of binding could depend on how much someone is willing to pay.

[mirkwood]

I wonder if they had this one.

[Physicist]

Bibliopath ping.

Please FReepmail me if you want on or off this ping list.